The Deer Need the Wolves to Survive

When environmental science teacher Kirby Kohler isn’t teaching at the Rhinelander Community Charter School he’s usually out in the woods, hunting.  Kohler just published a story in “Traditional Bowhunter” magazine called “Whitetails, Wolves, and Lightning Bolts.”  Kohler argues that when  hunters challenge the protection of the wolf under the Endangered Species Act hunters create a negative image with the non-hunting public.   To listen to a "live" stream broadcast of this story, click here

 

 

Kirby Kohler appreciates hunting in wolf country because wolves indicate healthy land.

When environmental science teacher Kirby Kohler isn’t teaching at the Rhinelander Community Charter School he’s usually out in the woods, hunting.  Kohler just published a story in “Traditional Bowhunter” magazine called “Whitetails, Wolves, and Lightning Bolts.”  Kohler argues that when  hunters challenge the protection of the wolf under the Endangered Species Act hunters create a negative image with the non-hunting public. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network talks with Kirby Kohler about hunting and wolves.

 

Kirby Kohler grew up hunting in northwestern Minnesota.  It’s wild country, rolling landscape, with aspen, and oak and thick, hazelnut underbrush.

 

“The woods is alive with deer, bear, rabbits, grouse.”

“Wolves, coyotes, fox, badgers, songbirds, the air is clean, the water is clean.”

“It’s a healthy land.”

 

There aren’t many roads in northwestern Minnesota.  So it’s  a place of refuge Kohler returns to every November to hunt whitetail deer with a rifle or a bow and arrow. 

 

There are more than 2500 wolves living in northern Minnesota.

 

“Well, the way I look at is when I’m out there hunting with my stick and string, I’m hunting alongside wolves, we’re both  after the same thing.  We’re after deer And the wolves are there, and that makes the place special to me. The wolves almost are the caretakers of the landscape, in my opinion.  It seems like whenever you have wolves in the landscape you have healthy land.  The wolves are an indicator of health.”

 

Right now,  in more heavily developed northern Wisconsin, there’s upwards 375 wolves.

 

For centuries wolves were relentlessly persecuted, shot, poisoned, and trapped, almost disappearing, until  the early nineteen  seventies, when the Endangered Species Act brought some protection. 

 

An adult wolf eats sixteen to twenty deer a year, usually preferring fawns the sick and older animals.

 

“But the wolf certainly doesn’t damage a deer herd.”

“The wolf, the wolf is responsible for making the deer such a wonderful animal.  Thousands of years of predator-prey relations.

We should thank the wolf for making the deer what it is.”

 

But some hunters feel competition and are afraid of wolves.

 

The wolf recovery in Wisconsin has brought some intense conflict between humans, livestock and  bear hunting dogs.  The state pays for some of these damages, sometimes even, shooting problem wolves. 

 

For several years there’s been a backlash in the hunting community against wolves. But more so since a  recent federal court ruling forbids  killing wolves.

 

You don’t have to go very far down a northwoods road to see a bumper sticker, “Kill all the wolves.”

  

 “If biologists are trying to create some kind of compromise, why do we keep seeing the bumper stickers.  I mean why do we see  ‘the only good wolf is a dead wolf’ bumpersticker.  I thought  we got over that.”

 

Growing up in northwestern Minnesota Kirby Kohler learned to hunt from his grandfather.  Like many men who survived in the woods, when food was short, Kohler’s grandfather hated wolves.

 

Kirby was thinking about his grandfather, during the 1985 Minnesota hunting season, when some wolves, who’d been chasing a doe, passed under his deer stand.

 

“My gun went up and I centered the cross hairs on the big black one in the lead, clicked off the safety, kept on thinking to myself, my grandfather always said the only good wolf is a dead wolf.  For some reason I just couldn’t pull the trigger on that day.  Most of the guys in my hunting camp would have pulled the trigger during that time in the mid-eighties.  But I couldn’t.  The land was too important to me, and it’s more important to me now.”

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